Gianfelice Imparato, left, stars as Don Ciro in Matteo Garrone's controversial crime drama Gomorrah. (Mario Spada/E1 Films)

There is no turn-on and no pay off in the grisly and remarkable Italian gangster drama Gomorrah. When two cocky and clueless kids — Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone) — play shoot-'em-up in the sunken tub of an abandoned home, pretending to be a pair of Al Pacinos as Tony Montana in Scarface, their posturing is as close as anyone in the film gets to the hedonistic pleasures one associates with a life of corruption. The mansions in Gomorrah, a portrait of the many-tentacled criminal activities of the Italian crime syndicate known as the Camorra, are all run down – pools drained, pleasure-free. Someone is getting rich, but not in the shabby tenement building in Naples where the film is set.

Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone is deeply in touch with not just the futility of gangster culture, but the absurdity of it.

Gomorrah is based on a sprawling journalistic novel about the Camorra’s illegal activities written by a young author named Roberto Saviano, who now lives under police protection. A flock of writers, including director Matteo Garrone, helped turn it into an equally sprawling film. But despite a five-plot pile-up, the centre holds; Garrone is a careful director who never gets overwhelmed, keeping a tight grip on a complex tale.

In an unforgettable opening sequence, we see a group of gangsters getting buffed in a dingy spa; their beefy, out-of-shape bodies baste in tanning booths and one is nestling in for a pedicure. Then, suddenly, all are gunned down, their murders caught in the strange orange glow of the heat lamps. The camera moves swiftly, refusing to allow the violence to tantalize. Seeing them die while undertaking such acts of silly vanity sets a tone of recurring black humour: everyone is disposable, and every action, no matter how profound or how trivial, may be your last.

In a crumbling social housing project, characters exist in various fallen states, all touched by the Camorra’s gang warfare. Toto (Salvatore Abruzzese), 13 years old and with a sprouting of peach fuzz above his lip, is a decent kid who delivers groceries for his neighbours. That sociability makes him a perfect recruit, and he begins, little by little, to work his good-boy demeanour for the mob.

His final test as a new recruit has him standing in a bulletproof vest taking a slug to the chest. This pathetic moment is meant to be a rite of passage, but it’s just a simulacrum of manhood. Garrone is deeply in touch with not just the futility of gangster culture, but the absurdity of it. Toto standing there, a boy in a protective vest courting a future without any protection, drives home the sheer uselessness of the swagger and preening, the nothingness within.

Ciro (Ciro Petrone, left) and Marco (Marco Macor) in a scene from Gomorrah. (Mario Spada/E1 Films)

Three older men give us a sense of what Toto might become, if he’s lucky enough to make it to adulthood. Franco (Toni Servillo) is the closest thing to a success in the organization. He struts in his linen suits, aided by his anxious sidekick, Roberto (Carmine Paternoster), who helps him dump and bury toxic waste in whatever hole is big enough to take it. Less assured is Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato), an aging runner for the mob who delivers bundles of cash to other members. Everyone feels ripped off when he comes to the door like an unwelcome Santa Claus who hasn’t brought big enough gifts. He absorbs contempt from all sides even as the violence escalates, but there is nowhere for him to go. He is cornered, unable to walk away.

The most compelling of the three veterans is a tailor with a gift for making haute couture knock-offs, yet another arena where the Camorra takes a cut. Gentle Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) tries to keep out of the muck and mostly succeeds. To earn some extra money, he agrees to give secret sewing lessons to the factory workers of a Chinese competitor. But he has forgotten to whom his life is in service. With a new kind of joy on his puppy-dog-soft face, this man who has been entirely stripped of agency dares to assert himself. Pasquale eats Chinese food with his new employers and is treated like a God in the factory. But the war is everywhere: the Chinese bring him home in the trunk of a car so he won’t be seen. "The Chinese can cook," he tells his wife, gleeful, fingering his cash. "They called me Maestro!" He has experienced something like friendship, a taste of a life outside the narrow confines of the gangster world.

But that moment of freedom is also hopeless, as hopeless as the film’s enduring image of the two baby gangsters, Marco and Ciro, in their underwear, shooting at an empty seashore, mistaking a nightmare for a fantasy.

Gomorrah opens in Toronto on March 13, Ottawa on March 27 and Vancouver on April 3.

Katrina Onstad is the film columnist for CBCNews.ca.